The Age censorship re Educational Apartheid

THE AGE censors comments re Australian Lib-Lab-complicit Education Apartheid by a non-anonymous teacher and scholar

The Age published an article by a community worker and writer Chris Middendorp entitled “why should the public fund private schools” (The Age On-line, The National Times, 7 January 2011: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/why-should-the-public-fund-private-schools-20110106-19hhn.html .

The Age published some 116 comments on the article (all but 7 from anonymous bloggers) but would not publish the following comments from a 4 decade credentialled teacher made under his own name (Dr Gideon Polya) - one can only guess at what points The Age did not want its readers to read.

“Excellent article, the key point being that two thirds of Australian children attend a state school system that is grossly under-resourced while successive Lib-Lab governments lavish funding on well-resourced private schools. Some further key points below.

1. Consult the "My School" website and you will discover that the majority of Australian kids who attend state schools are disproportionately excluded from university (as well as from top universities and from top university courses such as law and medicine).

2. Similar Educational Apartheid exists in the US as intertwined race- and wealth-based segregation. According to the US Census Bureau (2003 data) the percentage of US-born people with a bachelor's degree or more was 27.2 (total), 29.7 (Whites), 16.3 (Blacks) 13.5 (Hispanics) and 48.3 (Asians) and this says nothing about the quality of the degree.

3. UK Deputy PM Nick Clegg has used the term Educational Apartheid to describe the wealth- and class-based educational inequities, stating "Oxford and Cambridge take more students each year from just two schools - Eton and Westminster - than from among the 80,000 pupils who are eligible for free school meals."

4. Senior UK journalist Peter Wilby has suggested a partial UK solution involving entry to top universities for the top student in each high school.

5. Various US Ivy League universities (Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton and Yale) have initiated substantial needs-blind entry with consequent large minority attendance (Google "Educational Apartheid").

6. Australian state schools are variously unable to provide basic final year subjects.

7. Reject Lib-Lab-supported Educational Apartheid and put Labor last until the ALP (Another Liberal Party) recovers its historical egalitarian values.”